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It seems when it comes to beleaguered tech giant Research In Motion, the more things change, the more they remain the same. There’s no other ways to describe it. The company continues to show an uncanny ability to remain in its own line of fire. Unfortunately, it doesn’t know when to stop shooting.

Another quarter is in the books and investors are now left wondering what just happened. Over the past three months there has not been a hotter stock on the market than RIM, which has more than doubled from its 52-week low of $6.22. Disappointingly, investors opted to not take their money and run. For this, they have now gotten burned.

As of this writing, the stock is down almost 18% to $11.61 after having closed the regular session on Thursday at $14.12. Were the earnings that bad? On the whole, RIM's numbers were better than decent relative to expectations. This is even though the company continues to report losses. For that matter, Q3 showed an improvement of 22 cents versus Street estimates of 35 cents.

Likewise, the company also beat on its revenue numbers - $2.7 billion versus estimates of $2.6 billion. However, in the midst of trying to stay relevant against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Google, RIM made the decision to change its services fee structure. This has been the company’s most profitable revenue source and accounted for almost $1 billion in revenue during the quarter.

That’s all well and good – except, the company could offer no clear explanation of how this was going to work. Meanwhile, everything regarding RIM – including the doubling of its stock price has been hedged on BB10, which is expected to launch at the end of January. The company just may have jeopardized any degree of success BB10 might have garnered. This just might have now opened an unexpected door for Microsoft's Windows phone 8 to gain more traction.

After all, what is there to now be excited about if RIM has just hurt its only real source of profitability? It also does not help that RIM must now pay fees to Nokia on an “ongoing basis” as part of their recent patent-licensing dispute. This shows how RIM is experiencing pressures from all sides and the company does not seem to have any answers. Unfortunately, the stock will be punished for it.